New Partners to Create Carbon Measuring System for Landscapes

Apr 15, 2009

World Wildlife Fund announced on April 1 a partnership with Michigan State University, the World Agroforestry Center, and the Center of International Forestry Research to develop an innovative system for measuring, monitoring, and managing carbon in a diverse range of landscapes.

The partnership, part of the Global Environment Facility and United Nations Environment Program’s Carbon Benefits Project, will help enable some of the world’s poorest people in the most vulnerable places to obtain the benefits of carbon sequestration.

The Carbon Benefits Project (CBP) is an innovative solution to a persistent problem: how to measure terrestrial carbon, particularly on complex landscapes. The CBP provides a cost-effective system that integrates the latest remote sensing technology and analysis, ground-based measurement, and rigorous statistical analysis.

“This project will offer a set of tools to help farmers, forest managers, and others better protect their land, increase productivity, and do this in a way that will help fight climate change,” said Ginette Hemley, WWF’s senior vice president for Conservation Strategy and Science.

“We anticipate that the methodology and tools will be adopted by a number of institutions and will help establish a new international standard,” noted David Reed, WWF’s vice president of Multilateral Relations.

The partnership will develop a state-of-the-art methodology for measuring, monitoring and reporting carbon baselines and outcomes from project activities related to terrestrial ecosystems. It will provide a tool to help people select agricultural and agroforestry options to decrease carbon emissions, increase carbon sequestration, and improve related environmental, social, and economic benefits. These tools will be centralized in a Web-based portal that will be accessible to a wide range of users to monitor and manage carbon goals.